


Silk and Suede

by firstbornking



Series: Copper and Platinum [4]
Category: Rick and Morty
Genre: Abuse, Bullying, Emotional Manipulation, Forced Feminization, Grooming, Incest, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-17
Updated: 2020-10-17
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:08:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27060940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firstbornking/pseuds/firstbornking
Summary: wa·ger1. to risk (something) on the outcome of an uncertain event.2. to pledge oneself to some authority on the condition of an action taken.In which Rick and Morty make a bet, Rick wins irrefutably, and Morty learns all about the importance of follow through.
Relationships: Rick Sanchez/Morty Smith
Series: Copper and Platinum [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1706875
Comments: 6
Kudos: 85





	Silk and Suede

“Rick,” Morty said, voice cracking with incredulity. “You c-can’t - you cannot be serious.”

Rick leaned his head over the back of the desk chair, spinning in a slow circle to face his grandson. His expression was one of unapologetic amusement, eyes half-lidded with hero and mouth drawn into a lazy smile. His grandfather was about as high as a herald star, and Morty was still holding on to the hope he would pass out and forget all about this humiliating proposal.

The universe, however, hated Morty Smith. Rick pinned him with a look, an expression torrential with slings and arrows, and Morty knew no fortune was too outrageous for his brilliant boozehound of a grandfather to force him to suffer. 

“Morty, after everything I’ve done to you - all the shit I’ve put you through, wh-why on God’s green earth d’you think I’d draw the line at putting you in a dress while you fold my laundry and cook my dinner?”

Morty lifted the yellow sundress from his bed, holding it at arm’s length as if it were covered in filth instead of a perfectly clean garment. He swallowed. 

“Wishful thinking?”

Rick’s low laugh sent a shiver up his spine. His grandfather rocked the chair back, fishing his flask from his breast pocket as he said with a chuckle, “Self-indulgence at its finest, sweetheart.”

It should have been a sure bet. Morty still had the sneaking suspicion Rick had engaged in some creative redescription with a probability transducer, and he shot him a trenchant frown. 

“You cheated, Rick,” he said, both insistent and resigned, and Rick laughed louder, an ill-starred sound, a prelude to some fresh defilement. It was the same laugh Morty had heard the first time his grandfather had kissed him; the first time he’d forced him to masturbate in front of him; the first time he’d made him get down on his knees and wrap his trembling lips around his hard cock. Morty’s skin prickled as Rick spoke savvy and slow.

“Aww, don’t pout, now. Y-you lost fair and square, and a - hey, a bet’s a bet, M-Morty. You really wanna go into this weekend with an attitude right from the readyset?” 

Morty glared at him, indignant. “You - you - you played both ends against the middle, Rick! You told the shah th-that the regent of Vitutia was planning to make his little sister a concubine!”

“You never specified that subterfuge was against the rules, Morty. I know it’s harder to h-hate the game when you made it up, but -” he clicked his tongue, shooting his pointer finger at his grandson as he said, “- them’s the breaks, baby.”

Morty threw the dress back on his bed, the picture of exasperated disbelief. “People _died_ , Rick.”

Rick unscrewed his flask, setting it against his lips and saying with a smug smile, “But I won the bet, sweetie.”

Morty’s face pinched at the smell of alcohol, and he flopped down on his bed. He grabbed his pillow and smothered a long-suffering groan into it, and Rick drank deeply from his flask, watching his grandson wallow in misery and regret through hell dust heavy eyes. After the last drop slid down his throat, he sighed out wetly, slouching into the swivel chair as if he were seconds from passing out. 

“Jeez, w-would a little gratitude kill you, Morty? I picked out your favorite color a-and _-errp-_ and everything.” 

Morty rolled away from him, a muffled grumble carrying weakly across the room, and Rick tilted his head. “What was that, baby?”

“I said,” Morty lifted his face from the pillow, speaking to his posters with a sulky little lour, “I might have to play housewife for you, but nothing in the rules said I-I-I have to _like_ it, Rick.” 

Rick blinked, silently processing this for three ticks of the wall clock before his lips pulled back in a languid, drawling chuckle.

“Fair enough.”

Morty shivered, dread seeding itself deep in his stomach, and he clutched his pillow tighter to his chest. 

“Nothing about this is fair, Rick,” he whispered.

Rick rested his chin in the palm of his hand, a bored baron in a promenade room, and said, “You’re just saying that ‘cause it’s not unfair in your favor, sweetheart.”

Morty stared at the ceiling, counting backwards from ten. 

He reached zero, and screamed into his pillow. 

…

"- and no sci-fi shenanigans, dad. I don't wanna come home to transuranic space slugs slithering through the plumbing again, alright?"

Rick slouched against the staircase’s balustrade, hands in his khaki pockets. He shot his daughter a reassuring smile, and Morty glared at him out of the corner of his eye as he helped his mother wheel her luggage through the entryway.

“Don't worry, sweetie. You - you’ve got my word as a caregiver,” he held his hand up in a three fingered scout’s honor salute, saying with complete sincerity, “Me and Morty - we need a little break from the fast lane, anyways. We’re just gonna use this _-errp-_ this weekend to relax and catch up on some chores around the house.”

Beth looked pleasantly surprised, and Morty struggled not to roll his eyes as he picked the suitcase up over the front door’s threshold plate. 

"You're gonna look at the garbage disposal?"

Rick pushed off from the handrail with a lazy nod, rolling his shoulders and yawning widely. "That a-and the - what else have you been nagging me about?"

Beth straightened her back and put a hand on her hip, but her expression was permissive and good humored as she said, "All the holes in the sheetrock you made last month with your shock cannon trial run?"

"Yeah, that."

"And the light fixture your printed elephant bird knocked loose?"

Rick sighed, looking at the kitchen fixture in question as he said noncommittally, "Uh huh."

Beth gave him an unconvinced look. "The bathtub needs to be recaulked, too, dad."

"Jesus Christ, pull a fucking hat trick on me here, why don't you?" Rick said, grievously put upon, but he stepped forward to wrap an arm around her upper back and lead her out the door behind Morty. "I'll handle it, sweetie, just - just focus on finding the right money pit for Summer to sink four years of experimentation and irresponsibility into. It's not a decision to take lightly."

Beth laughed, a light, happy sound that made Morty’s chest ache. He kept his head down as they loaded up the Country Squire station wagon and Beth ran through the obligatory parting pleasantries. 

“Don’t hesitate to call if you need anything, and I’ll shoot you a text when we get to the hotel in Palo Alto. Just try not to transport the house to another dimension or something for two and a half days, alright, dad? That’s all I’m asking.” 

Rick ran a hand through his hair, nodding easily along. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. No wired play parties, no bringing extinct animals back to life, no pulp fiction nonsense, I got it, Beth.” 

He opened the front passenger door for her and waved her into her seat, making no effort to hide how eager he was for them to leave. “I swear - I promise, sweetie, you’ve got nothing to worry about. It’s gonna be just - nothing but domestic boredom for me and Morty all w-weekend long.”

Morty dropped his mother’s suitcase in the trunk with a loud thud, but no one looked at him. Beth smiled at Rick as she fastened her seatbelt, Jerry fussily fixed the side mirrors which Rick had adjusted to his liking the last time he’d flown the wagon, and Summer chatted happily on her phone about her college shopping trip.

“- god, Tricia, there’s this one that’s built like, right on a beach that I am dying to see. Can you imagine? All the guys in swim trunks playing volleyball under the hot California sun -” Beth cleared her throat loudly, catching Summer’s eyes in the rearview, and Summer twirled a strand of hair around her pointer finger as she finished innocently, “- while I study an extremely expensive textbook about fluvial geology. I know, right? How fun would that be?”

Morty didn’t know if he wanted to laugh or cry. His hands were starting to sweat, his heart to pound. He was torn between wanting his family to postpone their departure so he could put off this weekend for as long as possible, and wanting them to hurry up and go so he could stop listening to his grandfather’s disgusting double entendres fly right over his mother’s head.

“Alright, is that everything?” Jerry asked, glancing at his wife and daughter. “All packed up and ready to go look at out of state colleges we can’t possibly afford?”

“Jerry, we’ve been over this,” Beth said, clearly at the end of her rope with his financial commentary. “If Summer gets accepted, we’ll find a way. Now shut up and drive.”

Jerry sighed, shoulders slumping as he cranked the engine. “Yes, Beth.” 

Morty shut the trunk and stepped back to stand next to Rick, watching his family pull out of the driveway. His dad waved at him, and he forced himself to smile as he waved back. 

“Bye, son! Try not to have too much fun without us!”

With that, they drove down the street, turned onto Chestnut and out of view, and Morty was alone with Rick.

Again. 

Rick straightened the lapels of his lab coat, smile sunny as a midsummer vigil as he regarded his grandson. Morty held an elbow, watching Mr. Benson step out his front door across the street and ramble down to his mailbox. He gave them a neighborly tip of his fisherman’s hat, and Rick pantomimed tipping a hat back at him, and Morty wondered if he’d ever stop being shocked at how easy it was for his grandfather to act like a normal human being.

“You’re unbelievable, Rick,” Morty whispered. 

Rick laid an arm over his grandson’s shoulders, and said out of the side of his mouth while still waving at Mr. Benson, “I’m gonna fuck you in every room in this house this weekend, baby. You believe that?”

Morty paled, shuddered in a breath, twisted on his heel and ran inside. Before he slammed the front door behind himself, he heard Rick call out to their neighbor cordial and commiseratory, “Teenagers, am - am I right?”

As Morty grappled with a panic attack under his Vindicators bedspread, he knew this was going to be an exceptionally demanding weekend, and that was saying something.

Rick had already set the bar so high he couldn’t reach it straining on tiptoe.

… 

“Hold still for a sec, sweetie.”

Morty glared at the ruffled hem of the dress at his knees, arms crossed over his chest as his grandfather finished tying the cinching strings in a little bow at his back. Rick fluffed and straightened it, and Morty fought the urge to stomp his foot furiously. 

“Th-there we go, Morty, that’s - that’s perfect,” Rick said, so pleased Morty knew he was playing it up just to be mean, and stepped around to eye his grandson head to toe.

“How about you give us a little twirl, baby?”

Morty’s face caught somewhere between blanching and scowling, leaving him looking like a pale, pissed off spirit of pure humiliation. “I’m not - I am not doing that, Rick.” 

Rick looked at him as one would a favored child throwing a tantrum, which was a comparison that made Morty want to disappear in the woods around Mount Rainier, and said calmly, “Morty, I’m gonna give you a minute to think about this. Y-y-you’ve got two options here; either you make good on your word and - and you do as I say until Monday, or you welch on your bet and I show you what happens when you break a promise to your grandpa. Either way, I’m getting what I want out of you, sweetheart, so what’ll it be?”

Morty hugged himself tighter. The flowing fabric of the dress brushed over his knees in a way he wasn’t used to as he trembled under his grandfather’s patient gaze. He considered putting his foot down and saying ‘no’ with every ounce of temerity he could muster, but Rick’s glinting eyes and gamesome grin flashed in his mind, and he ducked his head submissively.

He spun in a quick, tight circle, and Rick’s raspy chuckle filled his bedroom.

“There’s my good little girl.”

Morty’s eyes widened, snapped to look up at his grandfather with a new flush of embarrassed horror. 

“Wh-what?”

Rick shot his grandson a smile so smug and stirred up Morty stopped breathing. “I don’t think I stuttered on that one, baby.”

“R-Rick, y-you didn’t - you never said anything a-about -”

Rick cupped the side of Morty’s face, tilting his chin up with his other hand as he said, tone still that infuriating shade of cool and collected, “Morty, you’re the one that didn’t bother to put any restrictions on what I could do with you when I won. J-just - jeez, baby, just be grateful I’m going so easy on you. It’s just a little roleplay.”

Morty shivered as the rough pad of his grandfather’s thumb caught on his lower lip.

“I’m not a girl, Rick,” he said, struggling to frown instead of pout. Judging by Rick’s fond expression, he failed. 

“I didn’t say you were a girl, Morty,” he corrected gently, stooping a foot and a half to brush their lips together. “I said you were mine.”

Morty blushed, and began counting the minutes until Monday.

…

Apparently, 'just a little roleplay' involved dusting bookshelves, cleaning glass covers, and washing windows, inside and out. Rick had a laundry list or chores, upon not least of which was laundry, and Morty quickly realized Rick intended to work him to the bone all weekend long. The second he finished one task, Rick had another one lined up, which wouldn’t be so unbearable if it weren’t for his insistence on calling on him while he was in the middle of each and every toilsome labor. 

“Morty! Get in here!”

Morty sighed, slopping the sponge he'd been using to scrub grime off the baseboards in the living room back into the bucket of brown water beside him. The daisy print handkerchief tied around his head was damp with perspiration, and sweat was beginning to bead up along his upper lip. He fussily wiped his wet hands on his apron as he got to his feet.

“Coming, grandpa Rick!” he called back, unable to keep the petulant frown out of his voice. He stepped through the partition into the kitchen and peered down at his grandfather, who was laid on his back, head and shoulders inside the cabinet under the sink, working a pair of pliers on a drain pipe hose clamp above himself. 

Morty stood by the refrigerator, resting a hand lightly on its side, and asked carefully, "Did you need some help with that, Rick?"

Rick set the pliers down, twisting and removing the garbage disposal and tossing it on the wood floor with a loud _clunk_. It had a large, rusty crack down the side of it, and smelled of sulfur and rotten vegetation. He didn’t look at him as he said, “That’s sweet of you to offer, b-but this is no - this ain’t a job for a little girl.”

He sat up with a small grunt, and grabbed a Phillips head screwdriver and the new garbage disposal. He flipped it upside down and began opening its power cable access panel. “I just wanted you to grab me a beer, baby.”

Morty looked from Rick, to the fridge beside himself, and slowly back to his grandfather. “Rick, the fridge is literally five feet away from you.”

Rick ignored his obvious irritation, pulling thick wires from the bottom of the contraption in his hands and picking up a gray pigtail cord next to his thigh. “Yeah, and I want you to open it and get me a Blue Moon, Morty.”

Morty balled his hands up into little fists, mouth dropping into a hard line as anger added a layer of saturation to the flush of exertion. “Th-that’s - that’s - Jesus, Rick, it’d take you like two seconds to get it yourself.”

Rick slotted the cord in the correct position and began twisting wires together, fingers nimble as they were calloused; Morty could tell the wires were extremely stiff and took no small amount of strength to entwine, but Rick made it look easy. “I’m - I’m sorry, who said he’d do whatever I asked for a weekend if he couldn’t stop a counterrevolutionary uprising?”

Counting backwards from ten was a woefully inadequate anger management tactic when it came to Rick Sanchez. Morty pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to resist the urge to punch the magnetic poetry off the fridge door. He glared at nothing and everything as he opened it and snatched up a beer for his petty, demanding, god awful grandfather. 

Morty kept his eyes on his grandfather's hands as he walked over to him. They were grungy with grease, nails yellowed with nicotine and blackened with grime, knuckles nicked and knurled from long years of applied science and dirty fighting and hard labor. He fastened a wire cap over the cables and started spinning it tight to hold them in place, and for reasons Morty cordoned off and declared off limits for consideration, his heart began banging against his ribcage.

He swallowed audibly, and Rick paused, glancing up at him. 

“Y-you like that?” Rick asked, a smirk perverse with self-satisfaction curling across his face. “You like watching your old man fix things up around the house, sweetie?”

Morty fumbled with the neck of the beer bottle, fingers slipping clumsily through slick condensation; he lost his grip on it with a gasp, startled into a half dive after it - but Rick shot out a hand and caught it midair with a soft chuckle. 

“That's a fucking yes if I’ve ever heard one, Morty.”

Morty righted himself, shoulders snapping back prim and prudish. He flushed and glared, trying to retain some semblance of dignity, but it was beyond difficult in a floral sundress and bright yellow ballet flats.

“I-I-I told you I c-can’t stand you calling yourself that, Rick,” he said with a huff, fussing with his handkerchief and staring out the kitchen window above the sink. “It’s so weird.”

Rick stretched his legs out, letting his shin brush against his grandson’s pigeon-toed feet as he twisted the cap off his Blue Moon with a carbonated hiss. Cool mist drifted from its open mouth as he lifted it to his lips, and he said with a half shrug and a sarcastic tint to his voice, “Yeah, because what’s weird about your grandpa tapping your ass raw on the regular is w-when he refers to himself as ‘your old man.’” 

Morty took a half-step back so Rick wasn’t touching him, and looked back out of the partition to the living room where the rest of the dirty baseboards awaited him. “Is that all, Rick?”

Rick sipped his beer, tilting his head and humming in consideration. Morty’s stomach sank when he shook his head no, saying, “One more thing, Morty.”

Morty held still, swallowing hard and saying nothing while Rick ran a hand up his calf, fingering the lacy cuff of his sock. His tone was sly and cool and cruelly pleasant as he told his grandson, “Lift up your dress for grandpa, sweetheart.” 

The tips of Morty’s ears went red, his knees turning inwards against the everliving fire pooling in his stomach. His cock twitched between his legs at his grandfather’s low command, and he pulled down on the hem of his dress to flatten the shadow it casted in the fabric. “I’ve - but I’ve got chores to do, grandpa.”

“Well, look - w-would you look who’s such a dutiful little housewife, now,” Rick said, smirk widening. “With all the bitching you were doing, you think you’d jump at the chance for a break, baby.” 

Morty wrung his hands up in his dress, staring at a note his mother had no doubt arranged for herself with magnetic words in the center of the fridge door, ‘I am empty, please fill me.’ Above it was a picture of his family camping, held in place with a word at each corner, ‘celebrate summer bitter treasure.’

Rick wasn’t in the photo. He’d been the one holding the camera. 

“Somehow, I don’t think your idea of a break is the same as mine, Rick,” Morty said, sullen and sour. Rick grinned up at him, pale lips pulling back over cracked, yellow, flesh shearing teeth. The mid-afternoon light pouring in from the kitchen window glinted wetly off his tongue as he licked over one of his incisors, and Morty shivered in the warm glow of his grandfather’s amusement.

“Really?” Rick asked, bending a knee and resting an elbow on it as he drank half his beer and traced his fingers over the satin of Morty's shoes. "What makes you think that, Morty?"

Morty shot him an oblique look. “The last time y-you suggested we take a break, you made me sit on your lap a-and -” he paused, and lowered his voice even though no one was around to hear him, “- and touched me while we watched Ball Fondlers, grandpa Rick.” 

Rick snickered over the mouth of the beer bottle. He drew in his other leg, levering himself up into a towering stretch; he braced one hand behind his back as he cracked it, and said with good humor and poor taste, “Blame me for taking the title literally, baby.” 

Morty cursed himself for cowering, but cowered all the same. He again eyed the partition to the living room, one more bid to escape on his lips, but Rick leaned back against the kitchen sink and ran his fingers over the edge of the handkerchief lining his grandson’s damp brow. He crossed his feet, and turned his beer up in another idle swallow, and said, “Lift up your dress before I do it for you, Morty.”

Morty’s flush traveled down his chest, and he fiddled at the rolled hem of his dress. Rick waited, eyes hooded and dark, running a finger over the triangle the handkerchief formed at the crown of his grandson’s head. He pulled it back, watching the way the tight curls fell out from under it with an almost spellbound look on his face, and Morty bit his tongue to keep himself quiet as his grandfather straightened out a lock of his hair just to let it bounce back into place, saying mildly, “Three…” 

He flattened the curl again, and Morty went still as he let it go and said, “Two…”

Morty’s eyes went wide, and he hastened to snatch his dress up to his waist. Rick afforded him a pleased smile, and Morty’s flush took on a bitter red sheen in the wake of his humiliating praise. 

“There’s grandpa’s good girl.”

Rick kept playing with his hair, and Morty bit his tongue harder. ‘Good boy’ was already bad enough, but of course Rick could find a way to make things worse. He struggled to keep his knees straight as his grandfather looked him up and down, hands balled into trembling fists in the breezy cotton of his dress, and he lowered his eyes when Rick traced damp, dirty fingertips over the floral lace lining his panties. 

“These really fucking suit you, y-y-you know that, baby?” he asked, hooking a finger inside the waistband and stretching it out by slow centimeters, taking in the view with obscene enjoyment. Morty’s knees slanted inwards, his feet going pigeon toed, and Rick lowered the panties under his grandson’s soft cock as he said, “With how much you bitch and whine and cry, I should’ve had you in panties and a pretty little dress years ago, Morty.” 

Morty gasped at the buzz and prickle Rick’s touch sent shimmering across his skin, shifting a foot behind himself and dropping the dress down to his hips. He darted his eyes from the family picture on the fridge, to the kitchen window that offered a clear line of sight to the front yard, up to his grandfather’s lazy smile and lupine eyes.

“R-Rick, someone could - s-someone might see -”

“Hold the dress under your chin, sweetie.”

Morty choked on his protests. Rick sipped his beer, calm and detestably self-assured, waiting with the overflowing patience of a man that had no doubt he would be obeyed. He rolled his hand in an all too familiar gesture that prompted compliance, and Morty pinched his eyes shut as he did as he was told.

“Touch yourself for me, Morty,” he said, leaning more comfortably against the sink, and Morty shrank in on himself, holding his upper arms tight to his sides, swallowing down the urge to scream an outright refusal. Morty didn’t know why, but something about Rick stepping back and demanding an outright show set him to bristling in a way his touch didn’t.

It was because it removed Rick from the role of fellow performer in the play he wrote and directed himself, shining the spotlight on Morty standing center stage all alone, but Morty didn’t have the emotional vocabulary to express that. He could only bow under his grandfather’s gaze, and beg hopelessly, “Pl-please don’t m-make me do that, Rick.” 

Rick turned his chin to crack his neck, yawning at yet another tedious refusal, and he tossed back in cruel mockery, “Pl-please don’t m-make me ask you twice, Morty.” 

Morty’s mouth crimped, his lower lip wobbling in a prelude to waterworks, and Rick moved to set his beer down, saying with a sigh, “If you wanna skip all the foreplay and just get fucked, y’know I don’t mind, baby, but -” 

Morty made a sound between a yelp and a squeak, ducked his chin tighter against the hem of his dress, and grabbed hold of his cock. Rick smirked at him, another ‘good girl’ no doubt on the tip of his tongue, but before he could offer more indecent praise, his phone went off in his back pocket. 

Rick answered it on speakerphone, took another sip from his beer, and said, “Hey, sweetie.”

 _“Hey, dad. Just calling to let you know we made it to the hotel,”_ his mother’s voice rang out in the room, tinged with relieved happiness her father answered her call. Morty heard her say something to his dad away from the phone, the sound of a car door slamming, before she said, _“Did you two get straight to work on those chores, or are you waiting til the last minute to get them done?”_

Rick tapped the old garbage disposal with his foot, sliding his eyes over Morty’s state of undress, his shaking hand cupping his shamefully hardening cock, and said, “Nah, w-we uh - we went ahead and got busy, Beth.”

Morty gaped at him, horrified, and started to remove his hand and lower his dress, but Rick mouthed at him, _‘Don’t stop.’_

 _“Really? That’s - wow, that’s a welcome surprise.”_ There came a brief pause, and when she spoke again her voice was quiet with compromise, _“Y’know, you don’t really have to do everything I mentioned, dad. You already take care of so much, and I know you must have a lot of experiments to work on, too.”_

Rick finished his beer, never taking his eyes off his grandson, and said, “Don’t worry about it. You’re right I’ve _-uurgh-_ I’ve let a lot of shit slip around here, and you can barely trust Jerry to fix a goddamn sandwich, let alone the plumbing. We’ve got it covered.” 

Morty looked down at his naked body, his erect nipples and the creeping flush blanketing his skin, and a spark of anger flickered through the fear closing him in and binding him down. He glared at his grandfather with genuine outrage, but Rick just flashed his teeth at him as Beth said, _“You are such a lifesaver, dad. Jerry's been a complete nag about money lately, especially with Summer's tuition coming up, so you helping out around the house like this is a huge weight off my shoulders.”_

“Jesus, what's he got to worry about?” Rick asked, rolling his eyes and swirling the backwash in the bottom of his bottle. “It's not like he's paying for it.”

 _“God, right?”_ Beth groaned in agreement, and bile roiled in Morty's stomach. He flinched as Rick pulled the phone away from his ear and mouthed, _‘Touch yourself.’_

__

Thoughtlessly, Morty’s hand obeyed, rubbing up and down his semi-hard shaft as his mother kept talking. _“I’m glad Summer hasn’t let his bad mood bring her down. She’s been looking forward to this trip for months now. I think what Jerry is so upset about isn’t so much the cost of her tuition as the fact we’re not planning on doing this for Morty, too.”_

Morty went still. He searched Rick’s face for some explanation, but his expression stayed neutral as he asked, “Is he still on about that? I thought you said he understood.”

 _“He does,”_ Beth said, sighing. There was the sound of a door falling shut, a suitcase thudding to the floor, and excited chatter in the background. Beth answered a question away from the phone before speaking to her dad again. _“He knows college isn’t the best place for Morty. He’s just ready to disagree with anything you say, even when you’re right, dad.”_

Rick’s eyes never left Morty’s. He watched his grandson’s face fill with confusion, before falling with comprehension, and his tone remained bored as he said, “He’ll come around, Beth. After all, it’s - it’s not like he’s got much of a say in the matter.”

Within one second, Morty saw a future he hadn’t yet considered both come into focus, and evaporate into nothingness. Rick stared on as Morty’s eyes watered with despair, clinked his empty bottle down, and threw his voice to give the impression he wasn’t right in front of him, “Morty, be a good sport and get grandpa another beer r-real quick, alright?”

Morty’s eyes and nostrils flared, his heart galloping and hands trembling as adrenaline flooded his system. Without a second thought, he righted his panties, let the dress fall, and snapped out, shivering and cracking and broken with betrayal, “Get it yourself, y-you fucking asshole.”

Rick blinked at him in mild surprise, but his bemused smile said he wasn’t at all shocked, and Morty bit back an inarticulate scream as he stormed upstairs. He could hear his mother ask, _“What was that, dad?”_

“Nothing, Beth,” Rick’s voice echoed up the stairwell. “Just Morty being a little drama queen. I-I better go sort him out. Tell Summer I said to take the drug scene into account when choosing her college, sweetie.”

Beth laughed, and the first tears of the day stole down Morty’s cheeks.

**Author's Note:**

> Lovely art by @dachii19 and @rickxoxomorty as part of the Minibang Challenge! There's more to come for this story, just gotta get their first time one squared away first. Thank you so much for reading!


End file.
